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Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

March 21st, 2010

Get Dad on Foursquare, Twitter, and Facebook Mobile (from Any Phone)

In the day between SXSW Interactive and SXSW Music the private, open-bar parties of Interactive end, and the streets light up like Mardi Gras.

The other dramatic change I noticed?

When I checked into The Driskill during SXSW Interactive, foursquare altered me,

Via Foursquare: “You are checked in with 250 other people”

But one day later during SXSW Music I received a paltry,

Via Foursquare: “You are checked in with 6 other people.”

What changed? The hotel was just as crowded, if not more so during music, but it’s pretty obvious that the music folk are less inclined to geek-out. I was surprised how many of my friends, ones who even had foursquare and Twitter accounts, didn’t really understand how to use them, or how they could be valuable to their business. Also, I was surprised how many of my friends had normal cell phones where the only app was SMS.

So, I’d like to share how you can get involved with foursquare, Twitter and Facebook using any mobile phone.

foursquare

1) Sign up for a foursquare account

2) Sign in and click “Settings” -> Under Account Info click “edit” -> Add your phone number

3) Check-in via a text to 50500 (like this:  @ Starbucks ! Spending too much money on coffee.)

Extras: From the web, you can visit the mobile address on the web to check-in, or use the desktop application FoursquareX which has a cool map view and plots your friend’s avatars around your location. (note: the SMS feature is only available in the US at the moment).

Twitter

1) Sign up for a Twitter account (duh)

2) “Settings” -> “Mobile” -> Add your mobile number

3) Send an SMS to Twitter at: 40404 (or for an international numbers)

4) Go back to “Settings” -> “Mobile” to decide who you will receive tweets from, or you can set it up as DMs only

Facebook

1) “Account settings” -> “Mobile” -> Add your number and preferences, click save

2) SMS “f” (with the quotes) to 32665 (FBOOK)

3) After you receive the confirmation text your status to 32665 “@ OMG. I’m Awesome”

May 1st, 2009

Amateur Spies and Facebook Schizophrenia

The following is an abstract I submitted to Wiley-Blackwell Publishing for possible inclusion in their upcoming book Facebook & Philosophy:

Amateur Spies and Facebook Schizophrenia:

The News Feed Makes it More Difficult to Lie

facebookThe Facebook News Feed ensures that we will never be alone again—for better or for worse. By piecing together fractions of our friends’ lives, it sets the tone for a dystopian-style ‘ambient awareness’ in which we are constantly watching each other out of the corners of our eyes. The News Feed epitomizes media theorist Neil Postman’s outcry that we have become a culture controlled by our obsession with entertainment. Postman illustrates how our culture is less like that of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, where Big Brother controlled society by depriving the public of information, and more like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World where the public is “reduced to passivity and egoism” as they “drown in a sea of irrelevance.”

One thing that Facebook does have in common with Nineteen Eighty-Four, on the other hand, is the concept of amateur surveillance. Importantly, it is the “amateur spies” of the Thought Police who pose just as great a risk as Big Brother, and who ultimately lead to the protagonists’ tragic fate. With Facebook we all have the potential to be amateur spies. The ability to monitor the lives of hundreds of people at a glance is reminiscent of Michael Foucault’s Panopticon, where the central guard can keep an eye on all the prisoners at once. On Facebook, the corresponding metaphor might be that each of us occupies the position of the central guard while at the same time being permanently visible as the prisoner.

Interestingly, due to our knowledge of this surveillance and the fear that any one of our friends has the power to broadcast into our News Feed, we are disciplined to be honest. Furthermore, struggles between our need to be the object of another’s desire (Jacques Lacan’s ‘paranoid knowledge’) and our fear of Foucault’s “inspecting gaze”, lead to a type of schizophrenia where we simultaneously divulge our most private details in the form of status updates, while being paranoid of being tagged in compromising photos. With every new friend we add we willingly sacrifice privacy for pleasure, and in doing so we become more accountable though paranoid.

PDF Version

December 5th, 2008

Facebook Connect Vs. OpenID
The Format War for Your Identity

Facebook Connect officially launched on Thursday and gives its members access to third-party sites using their Facebook login/password.  This feature is available to all FB’s members on (so far) 24 partner sites including: Digg, Twitter, Citysearch, CBS, CollegeHumor, Hulu and others.  In addition to instant access, Facebook Connect promises data portability: taking your friends, profile pics and privacy settings with you as you transverse the web. Facebook Connect will give us a well needed rest from profile-fatigue, but at what cost?

The data portability debate has been going on for some time now. The DataPortability Project has been promoting open source standards for data portability since 2007.  They encourage use of the well known OpenID authentication protocol which has already been adopted around the web by Google’s Blogger, AOL, Yahoo, etc – as well as having been incorporated into open source platforms like Drupal and WordPress.

It seems now that it may be Facebook Connect (with their 120 million users), and not OpenID, that will lead the data portability movement. This is alarming news for privacy advocates. Facebook has had controversial privacy issues in the past with its Beacon failure, misleading delete buttons, and opt-ing out.  If Facebook Connect does eventually become the standard ID for the internet, then one of the obvious question is: Do we trust our online identity to the Facebook corporation, with almost every page on the Internet arguably becoming a Facebook page, or serving as some extension of the Facebook platform?

"imagine owning your identity"

Chris Saad from the DataPortability Project helped answer a few of my questions about Facebook Connect’s departure from open source standards. “Facebook Connect does not use open standards. So we do not endorse their implementation”, Saad explained. “Facebook Connect is much like Microsoft’s Passport/Hailstorm project from a number of years ago. It’s an attempt to provide a proprietary single sign-on for the web”.

I asked, “How does Facebook Connect differ from OpenID?”

Saad: “OpenID is a key building block towards an open data portability ecosystem that will rival Facebook in both size and scope. A solution that no one owns and is open as the document web is.  OpenID is a piece of technology that is critical to the data web. It’s not a complete solution by itself however. What’s needed is agreement on the methods and protocols for a user to control the sharing of their data as well. The community is working hard on all of these issues, however, we’re just at the beginning of the story.”

We seem to be staging the next format war for our digital identities[1] – and as history has shown us, the best standard doesn’t always win.  In the famous  QWERTY vs. Dvorak keyboard battle,  the “inferior” QWERTY keyboard had already gained widespread adoption by 1936 when the “better designed” Dvorak layout was developed – here it is often said that the early adoption of a standard, or as many say “luck”, influenced the market’s choice.  In the famous VHS/BetaMax battle it has been said that Sony, despite  releasing the BetaMax one year prior, lost out to JVC’s VHS due to JVC’s “aggressive licensing” techniques[2].  The point being that independent of the quality, the commercial sector can greatly influence standards. Yet, the VHS/BetaMax battle is an interesting metaphor here for Facebook because perhaps the first one out the gate doesn’t have to prevail in light of a better alternative.  Futhermore, on the web we’ve seen dramatic format switching take place over only a few years (ex. Friendster -> MySpace ->Facebook).

So another way of thinking of it: Facebook Connect may be Facebook’s Achilles’ heel. This war might play out more like the Internet Explorer vs. Firefox debate, where open standards, open source and customizability can slowly triumph over evil corporate ownership.  If Facebook is unwilling to evolve - or if Beacon-esque privacy troubles arise - there could be backlash.  IF we are optimistic, Facebook Connect may actually be one of the “best things to happen to OpenID” and data portability in general.

1- Yahoo, MySpace and Google have also launched similar data portability projects this year
2 – In addition, BetaMax had better quality, but shorter record time than VHS
* – Get OpenID: http://openid.net/get/

December 1st, 2008

Pownce gets PWNED (and I get data fatigue)

Pownce has been acquired by Six Apart (Movable Type, TypePad and Vox) and will close their doors on December 15th.  Pretty lame if you ask me.  People spend a lot of time developing communities, updating profiles, pictures etc etc, only to have the founders (Leah Culver and co.) bail after a year and a half.

I think this shows the volatility of investing too much time and energy in Web 2.0 projects.  And Pownce wasn’t just any social network, just last year The NY Times called Pownce “the hottest startup in Silicon Valley”, Digg founder Kevin Rose threw his reputation at the site, and invitations were being sold on ebay.

Data portability would be really helpful for these situations.  And it seems a bit serendipitous that Facebook Connect has launched on the same day.  Personally I’m routing for the open-source protocols like OpenID, but any move towards data portability is a move in the right direction.

www.pownce.com/castig

October 6th, 2008

Stalking Myself (How to Opt-out of the Facebook News Feed)

A few weeks ago I created a Facebook pseudonym in order to follow the News Feed of the real “Chris Castiglione”.  Too often I hear stories from friends who hadn’t realized that by default Facebook broadcasts almost every update anyone makes to an account. Most notably when friends unknowingly transmit a relationship status messages (e.g. “Chris is no longer single”) or try to call out sick from work. I wanted to know what information Facebook was displaying to my friends, so I’ve been using a test account to see how well the privacy settings on Facebook actually work.

Recently, I uploaded my old photos onto my Facebook account.  As I uploaded each album, I “deleted” it from the wall feed on my profile page assuming that it would also remove it from my friends’ News Feed.  Yet, regardless of my effort to remove the “story”, my friends were inundated with over 10 notifications about my various photo albums! (And the same goes for deleting events, videos, joining groups or any “story” transmitted via the News Feed).

Facebook News Feed Privacy

Facebook News Feed Privacy

Similar issues have been brought up regarding the “hide story” feature that existed in “Old Facebook“.  The current “New Facebook” that launched in September has a new design, a new enhanced interface, and new ideas for how to mislead users.

It has only been two years since Facebook implemented the News Feed, and a lot has changed on the internet regarding how we view our own privacy.  Early issues concerning the Facebook News Feed were noted back in 2006 by danah boyd in her article “Privacy Trainwreck” where she was concerned with the amount of information we share with friends on the internet. She notes the new confusion and the “icky” feeling that comes from this new sense of exposure, or as others see it invasion.

But like I said, a lot has happened in two years, we’ve become more comfortable sharing our personal lives, and most days I’m Twittering, FriendFeed-ing and Pownce-ing my life to strangers. So… why am I so shocked and upset about Facebook sharing my “stories”? Because it feels like an icky invasion of privacy. Now when I use Facebook I feel like I’m being watched by someone else who is the same room and recording all my actions.  I’m much more hesitant to click or update my settings nervous that Facebook could be announcing it to everyone without my knowledge.

The major problem with the Facebook News Feed is that most people have little knowledge of how it works.  boyd has refers to this as “Facebook’s ‘opt-out’ precedent”.  Citing that Facebook continuously imposes new defaults unbeknown to the user with the defense that users can “opt-out”.  boyd goes on, “Given what  I’ve learned from interviewing teens and college students over the years, they have *no* idea that these changes are taking place (until an incident occurs).”

I think the bottom line is that Facebook – as the industry leader – needs to be more transparent with what is being done with our data!  If I “delete” one of my stories, then (of course) intuitively it should “delete” everywhere.

There are a few Facebook groups that have been raising awareness: Students against Facebook News Feed and Petition: Facebook, stop invading my privacy! But perhaps if you really want to be safe then the old adage about abstinence is truly the safest.  Of course we could stop using Facebook all together, but maybe that is a bit extreme. So instead here is how you can completely opt-out broadcasting to the News Feed:

How to Opt-Out of Facebook’s News Feed

1. Go to “settings -> privacy settings” at the top of your account.
2. Choose “News Feed and Wall”
3. Opt-out of all these boxes on the left. Save. Then click on “Edit Application” there on the right.

Facebook Out-out News Feed

4. Once you come to the application screen you’ll need to click “Edit” and select “Never publish any stories….” for each application.
Facebook Out-out News Feed 2